Professor wins national fellowship

By: Robert Martinez/Contributing Writer

A $50,000 check, plaque and pin later, Campbell McGrath, creative writing graduate professor, received the U.S. Artist Knight Fellowship Award late last year.

A group of 52 artists were selected through an evaluation conducted by a panel of experts from the Knight Foundation.

Among these artists was McGrath, who published several books of poems, wrote a play and libretto, translated the play “The Wasps” by Aristophanes for the Penn Greek Drama Series and collaborated with John Stuart, professor of architecture at the University, on a video/poetry piece called “14 Views of Miami.”

“My wife and I were flown out to Santa Monica, California for a ceremony where other acclaimed artists were celebrated for their art,” he said in an interview with Student Media. “The event was hosted by Tim Robbins, which was pretty neat, and I got to mingle with all the various other artists and it reminded me that art is different for many other people.”

McGrath was inspired to write by his love of reading as a child.

“The seed of writing poetry came with my love of reading. Before every writer was a writer, they were readers,” said McGrath, “In junior high school if [teachers] gave me the option to write a short story or write a book report, I jumped at writing the stories, because I thought it was fun and I kept doing it and ended up here.”

McGrath feels that the building blocks of writing poetry come from real observation.

“We see the world around us, but then it goes into our heads as memory, and we digest it,” he said.

When asked what other art mediums he pursued, he mentioned painting and music while in college.

McGrath poked fun at himself for not having any good talent in those mediums.

But his biggest issue was that in those forms, he didn’t have the control he had when writing poetry.

“With music and film you have all this expensive equipment and software. [In] painting, you need a canvas and paint. With poetry, I can be all those things,” he said,  “I can paint an image with my poems or write about music and all you need is a pen, notebook, yourself and time. That flexibility is what I love about poetry more than anything else.”

When teaching his creative writing graduate students he emphasizes abstraction in their work.

“People think of poetry as those lines you see in greeting cards, or violets are blue, roses are red. No that’s not poetry at all; if you want to say you are happy or sad, show me with your sentences. Convince me your world is real, then convince me of your emotions,” McGrath said.

One of McGrath’s former students, Richard Blanco, also achieved success in the world of creative writing.

Blanco is an engineer by trade, but has written three books of poetry, “City of Fires,” “Directions to the Beach of the Dead” and “Nowhere but here.”

“My students’ achievements mean more to me than my own,” said McGrath. “It’s like being a parent, you are happier when your kid wins little league than you are with your own accomplishments.”

“For that teaching is a rewarding past time; I know that I helped make the world a better place,” he said.

Blanco received his master’s in fine arts at the end of 1997, and was in one of Campbell’s first classes.

“I had an incredibly gifted artist who was also an incredibly gifted teacher,” said Blanco, “Many artists can’t teach, and many teachers are poor artists, but I was fortunate enough to have both, and he inspires me to do more, and be better.”

He added that one of the pieces written in the class became the first poem in Blanco’s first book.

“My first creative writing class [with McGrath] was by far my favorite because of the first assignment we had which was to write a poem about America,” he said of the poem, “and while I was born in Cuba, and raised in Spain and Miami, my America was very different than his.”

While Blanco believes Campbell is a fluid artist, he also considers him very practical.

“He taught us that there are no difficult poems only difficult writers,” Blanco said. “And that we must be able to enjoy ourselves and have fun with each and every poem.”